Even more terrible was the Palden Llamo, one of the divine protectors of Buddhism but also a devouring mother who sacrificed her own children. She rode upon a lake of entrails and blood, clutching a cup made from the skull of a child born from incest, her thunderbolt staff ready to smash the unbelievers and her teeth gnawing on a corpse. Her horse's saddle was made from the flayed skin of her own child, who had become an enemy of the faith, and snakes wound through her hair. Like many gods, she bore a crown of five skulls and a necklace of severed heads. Her ostensible purpose was to defend Buddhism against its enemies, and in particular to guard the Dalai Lama, but she must have terrified many true believers as well. The Tibetans considered Queen Victoria to be one of her incarnations.

Emphasis mine. Of all the sentences not to have an end-note! From The Bloody White Baron, a biography of the appalling Baron von Ungern-Sternberg: as Steve put it, "one of the most disturbing minor figures of history.... be glad that he is minor."

By odd coincidence my actual first wife Bronwen (between 1969 and 1970), whom we saw in Boston this past weekend and who is a serious Buddhist scholar, was mentioning (I think) this incarnation- will ask (;-), and forward...